May 16, 2018

SabreÕs Transforming Its Business, Aiming to Create Seamless Travel

The new executive team is working on building capabilities like automatic rebookings and personalized offers for travelers.
Sabre Corp. CEO Sean Menke has a vision to create a seamless travel experience in which all transactions, preferences, and changes are connected, automatic, and seamless. And several C-suite executives who he recently hired have already started making MenkeÕs vision a reality.

Menke believes Sabre should be the pioneer that creates a connected platform for all travel-related transactions. The idea is to meet the specific needsÑincluding everything related to bookings of flights, car rentals, hotel accommodations, etc.Ñof every trip in one place. It also means providing the opportunity to have all bookings related to the same trip automatically update if, say, a flight were to change. The platform aims to eventually aid all service providers and is expected to like an app store for the travel industryÑallowing developers to build various travel applications for the platform.

ÒFrom where I sit, thereÕs no other company that has the position vision and commitment to be this platform,Ó Menke told investors earlier this year during SabreÕs investor day.

SabreÕs chief information officer and chief technologyÑboth of whom have been on the team for less than a yearÑrecently dug into the vision to provide updates on the progress of the companyÕs transformation. The company expects to spend $500 million on tech infrastructure and $500 million in labor this year, with total tech costs projected to increase compound annual growth rates by 3 to 4 percent. Sabre is leaning on open-source libraries to help accelerate the work that needs to be done, using code that already exists to propel new ideas.

So far, Sabre has already begun the work for automatic reaccommodations for airlines, said CTO Vish Saoji. So if the weather changes or a flight is cancelled, the passenger is automatically booked on the next available flight and notified of the change.

ItÕs also working on what Saoji calls Òdynamic offers,Ó or personalized offers based on the travelerÕs preferences. After all, the company collects data from 20 billion queries and transactions a month. With predictive analytics, the team expects to be able to help forecast customersÕ needs and preferences with its new offers. ÒWe are hoping that that will be in products this year,Ó Saoji said.

Meanwhile, CIO Joe DiFonzo said the back-end work is also well underway, with Sabre building out the infrastructure and moving toward a cloud-based system. ItÕs also working to distribute functionality beyond the U.S., DiFonzo said.

With the new capabilities, Sabre execs expect to provide a lower-cost platform stacked with more capabilities. That was MenkeÕs vision when he joined the company, and as a result, it caused a shakeup in the executive team. Those who did not sign on to the new vision found opportunities elsewhere. Meanwhile, the company attracted executives like DiFonzo, the companyÕs first-ever CIO; and Saoji, both of whom were excited to be a part of the evolution of the company.

Saoji and DiFonzo both come equipped with experience in technologic transformations like the one Sabre is currently going through. Soaji has spent the last 25 years primarily in software technology companies, while DiFonzo has spent the last 28 years in the telecom industry.

ÒWhen this opportunity came, I was really excited about just the sheer É opportunity to build and reimagine not just the Sabre platform, but É the future of travel,Ó Soaji said.

ÒOne of the key attributes that Vish and I both bring to our jobs is this notion of, ÔHey, weÕve done this before,ÕÓ DiFonzo said. ÒItÕs difficult but itÕs not impossible. We know the traps and the pitfalls, and we know what to avoid.Ó

The other thing the two have in common, they said, is their aggressiveness in the timeline in converting SabreÕs mainframe system to a cloud-based open system in a distributed network. ÒWeÕve got a mission, weÕve got a plan, weÕre going to be doing this over the next few years,Ó DiFonzo said. ÒWeÕve figured out enough at this point to start moving, and we will work out more of the details as we work out the plan. But weÕre already making good progress.Ó


Copyright 2018 D Magazine Partners, Inc. All rights reserved. From https://www.dmagazine.com. By Danielle Abril.

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